"My God!" "I am not his. Pelleas, take me body and soul; take me and let me be your wife." "How can I sin against your soul, Igraine?" "Is it sin, then, to love me?" "You are Gorlois's wife before God." "There is no God." "Igraine!" "I will have no God but you, Pelleas." The man took his hands from his face and looked into Igraine's eyes. A strong shudder passed over him, and he seemed like a great ship smitten by a wave, till every fibre groaned and quivered in his massive frame. A green calm covered the valley, and the whole world seemed to faint in the golden bosom of the day. Not the twitter of a bird broke the vast hush of the forest. The sunlit aisles climbed into a shadowland of mysterious silence, and an azure quiet hung above the trees. As for Pelleas and Igraine, their two lives seemed knotted up with a cord of gold. They had mingled breath, and taken the savour of each other's souls. Yet for all the glory of the moment it was but autumn with them--a pomp of passion, a red splendour dying while it blazed into the grey ruin of a winter day. Igraine read her doom in the man's face. It was the face of a martyr, pale, resolute, yet inspired. A dry sob died in her throat, and her hands dropped from the man's shoulders. Pelleas stood back and looked at her with a warm light in his dark eyes, the green woods rising behind him like a bank of clouds. "Igraine." She nodded, felt miserable, and said nothing. "I cannot love you easily." Igraine's eyes stared at him with a mute bitterness. She was a woman, and thought like a woman; mere saintly philosophy was beyond her. "You are too good a man, Pelleas," she said. "I would hold my love in my heart like a great pearl in a casket of gold." "What comfort is there in mere splendid misery, and in such words?" "How should I love you best?" "Ah, Pelleas, ask your own heart." The man was an impossible being for mere mortal argument. He seemed to bear spiritual pinions that tantalised the intelligence of the heart. Igraine felt herself adrift and beaten, and she was hopeless of him to the core. "Think you I shall be a saint, Pelleas," she said, "when you have given me back to myself?" "I shall pray for you." "And for a devil!" She gave a shrill laugh, and twined her hair about her wrist. "Ah, Pelleas! you know not what you do." "Too well, Igraine." "You are too strong for me, and yet--and yet--I should not have loved you so well if you had not been strong." "That is how I think of you, Igraine." "You love me more by leaving me." "I love you more by keeping you pure before my soul." A great calm had come upon Igraine. She was very pale and firm about the lips, and her eyes were staunch as steel. Her voice was as clear and level as though she spoke of trivial things. "I shall not go back to Gorlois," she said. "Beware of the man." "Doubtless you would speak to me of a convent." Pelleas fell into thought, with his dark eyes fixed upon her face. "As a novice."